I know that attending the Yeshivat Maharat graduation is the “right thing to do” but it is easy to forget, until I am there, how incredibly important it is to my own spirituality and notions of what Orthodoxy can be. This past Sunday was Yeshivat Maharat’s second graduation and as Rabbi Avi Weiss noted, seconds are pretty big in the Torah, i.e. Noah, Yitzchak, etc. Seconds validate that firsts are not a flash in the pan.

Sunday was that kind of big day. There will soon be five practicing, Orthodox, female clergy who have been ordained by Yeshivat Maharat. They will be working in synagogues in Washington D.C., St. Louis, and Montreal and on the West Coast. This year’s incoming class of seven students is the largest class so far. What strikes me each time I see them is: how natural, warm, wholesome, and unmotivated by ego they are. It just seems so right.

For me, the highlight came when Rabbi Daniel Sperber, unable to contain himself, talked about the “generic criticism” that innovations in leadership and ritual in Orthodoxy have been getting. As he noted, the traditional role of halakha was to solve problems that arose. Halakha was never meant to be static or petrified as people now demand. Hence the root—halekh—to go, to move forward—makes that abundantly clear and yet is so distant from where we are today.

For those who weren’t at the graduation, I suggest that you watch it online—it should give you renewed hope in the vitality of Orthodoxy. For those who were there, and some who were not, I look forward to seeing you next year for the “Chazakah graduation,” the third graduation.

Mazal tov Maharats Rori and Victoria, Rabba Sara and team. May you go m’chayil l’chayil, from strength to strength! We need you!

My mother-in-law likes to use the expression “you could have knocked me down with a feather.” I can’t quite imagine that happening, but if it’s supposed to mean “shocked beyond words,” then that would have been an apt description of me five years ago, had I known there would soon be a move to nominate men to JOFA‘s Board of Directors. During the first ten years of JOFA’s existence, I don’t think any of us thought twice about the value of an all-female Board. In those days, we felt that the Orthodox establishment was generally so negative towards women, that we needed our own organization to call home. Yes, we had husbands, male friends and a few male supporters who were feminists but this was our space to be the main actors; they were the helpmates.

Well, speed up ten years and a lot has changed. Women are no longer the token members of synagogue and school boards that we once were. Women are officers and even presidents, though there are still too few women leading “name brand” Orthodox organizations. The main reasons JOFA had kept men off the Board of Directors are simply no longer relevant now that there are so many men who are engaged and effective feminists and community activists. What we have learned in the past ten years is that building communities with deep-seated modern Orthodox feminist values requires both women and men who have shared visions of equality, spiritual openness, and intellectual curiosity. Whether a leader lives those values and inspires others to do the same is much more important than that leader’s gender.

So how are we doing it?

First, we’ve decided, at least at this stage, that all members of the Executive Committee and the
majority of the Board will remain women. It is not easy to break down cultural barriers and we want to do it in an organized, intentional manner. We want this to work!

Second, this year, we don’t want to nominate only one man to our Board of Directors, we want at least two, and possibly several men. We do not deal in tokenism and we want that to be clear both from the inside and the outside. Will the conversations remain as spirited, the disagreements as collegial, and the compromises as satisfying? I sure hope so. It’ll depend on whether feminist men have a sense of humor too.

So, if this were even five years ago, you could have knocked me down with a feather, but today, we are an organization that talks the talk and walks the walk. I don’t know if it will guarantee our future but I do know that JOFA now speaks with one voice about our vision of the future. Wouldn’t it be great if other Orthodox organizations did the same and included women as full members of their leadership teams?

The seder is my favorite Jewish ritual, and every year, I have the best of intentions. In line with the rabbinic notion of preparing for a holiday thirty days in advance, I begin preparing for Passover as soon as Purim is over. I buy the newest haggadot that seem like they’ll provide interesting material. I go to a class about the haggadah given by someone who I expect to say something insightful, meaningful, and thought-provoking. And then I tell myself, this year will be different. I will actually sit down with all my haggadot before the seder. I will study them and use them as a springboard to develop my thoughts about the Exodus, redemption, and its relevance to our lives.

Sometimes it really works out that way but mostly, I am still holding tightly to this goal right up until the afternoon of Erev Pesach, hours before the first seder, when I am forced to recognize that it will simply not happen. I will likely have to wing it, assuming that is, that we still want several tasty charosesvariants (the family standard is to have at least two) and bug-freeromaine.

It is certainly not the cleaning that keeps me from delving into the haggadah in advance. I take the rabbis very, VERY seriously when they say that this isn’t spring cleaning. We do what the halakhah requires, but the search for chametz in our house does not involve dry cleaning the drapes. So what’s my issue? What is holding me back from preparing new content for the seder? And does it matter?

We can start with the fact that I love to have a festive table — no, make that a festive room. I decorate the room with wild beasts on the chandelier, frogs on the walls, and bug rings on the napkins. Lording over everything are little naked Moshes in baby baskets (Party City in the baby shower aisle!). The baby baskets are set inside vases with water, nestled into bigger baskets of grass. How could I possibly read anything until I’ve plastered every bare space with Exodus ambience? This may be one reason my adult children and my young grandchildren love our seders. It is not only the rituals and “k’zayit“s that make this night different — it’s about the sights, the smells, the textures, even the silliness.

And although I haven’t been reading my new haggadot, I have been cogitating about the Exodus and redemption. Sometimes the discussions that come from this process are the most interesting. As beautiful, meaningful, and special as the seder is, its most important purpose may be to set a tone for the rest of the year. If we can feel our Judaism so dynamically on this one night and enjoy it so profoundly, I know we have it in us to try a little harder to engage with it throughout the year.

So will this night be different? I don’t know. Though there’s still time for book-based prep, I know that whether I download articles and divrei Torah from years past on JOFA’s online library (at 6:05pm Monday night) or have my own divrei Torah ready in advance, my bugs on the napkin rings will make me smile, at least one of the charoseses will be weird and I can hope the spirit of the seder will carry over to the rest of the year.

This year on Purim, several minyanim in the U.S. and in Israel will be reading the Megillah with a twist. The congregations will recite aloud communally, not only the traditional sentences about Mordechai, but an additional sentence about Esther as well. If that doesn’t sound radical to you, you haven’t been around an Orthodox synagogue lately.

Carol Newman, JOFA’s past president, has long been amazed and frustrated at how women have been taken out of everything in Orthodox Judaism. When she talks about the absence of mothers’ names in ketubot, on gravestones, and during aliyot, she can get pretty “fahitzed” (worked up). But until this year, she couldn’t figure out how to put Esther back in the Book of Esther (waving fabric flags with Esther’s likeness on them when Esther’s name was mentioned didn’t really do it for her). Until she saw a source sheet identifying verses about Esther that are parallel to those we read aloud about Mordecai. And so a personal campaign was born.

After many passionate phone calls and email chains over the past few weeks, two partnership minyanimhave decided to recite a verse about Esther aloud during their megillah reading this year. According to Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin, Chief Rabbi of Efrat and Chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone, “There is absolutely no halakhic problem for the congregation to pre-read a verse which will then be repeated by the megillah reader. Therefore all the verses about Esther can be read in that way.”

Darkhei Noam, a partnership minyan in New York, will repeat the verse introducing Esther, “He was foster father to Hadassah – that is, Esther – his uncle’s daughter, for she had neither father nor mother. The maiden was striking and beautiful; and when her father and mother died, Mordechai adopted her as his own daughter” (Esther 2:7).

Shira Hadasha, a partnership minyan in Jerusalem, will repeat the verse where Esther establishes Purim as a holiday for the Jewish people, “And Esther’s ordinance validating these observances of Purim was recorded in a scroll” (Esther 9:32).

Mordy Hurwich-Kehat, a member of Shira Hadasha who was instrumental in creating this change, says, “I like Darkhei Noam’s practice, as it parallels Mordechai’s dramatic introduction, and Shira Hadasha’s too–as we learn in the Talmud tractate Megillah that Esther pushed for ‘her’ megillah’s inclusion within the Biblical Canon. Maybe, next year each of the two congregations will adopt the other’s practice.”

You might think it would be easy to convince people to repeat these little sentences but most rabbis and most synagogues, no matter how well intentioned, are not comfortable with change even when, as in this case, there is good support for it.

After all, who wouldn’t want to viscerally celebrate with Esther when she finally takes matters into her own hands and musters up her courage to save her people? So, this year, we take one small step for womankind… Next Sukkot maybe Miriam will show up in the prayer for rain!

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The Torch explores gender and religion in the Jewish community. Named for Deborah the Prophetess, "the woman of torches," the blog highlights the passion and fiery leadership of Jewish feminists, while evoking the powerful image of feminists "passing the torch" to a new generation.